The present disclosure relates to communication interfaces and, more specifically, to notification traffic normalization in a mobile communication environment.
The prevalence of mobile smart devices has driven many changes in the way clients and servers communicate. Some of the changes include new client/server application models and new types of notification mechanisms. Push notification forwards notifications from application servers to mobile devices. Notifications can include various types of data, audio, or text alerts. In contrast, pull technology is based on requests initiated by mobile devices. Push notification can improve battery life of mobile devices as compared to greater power consumption of background processes typically running to support pull technology.
To support push notification, mobile devices can include logic running outside of the client. The logic may trigger some action on the client via a notification. When a notification is received on the client, the specified action may require the client to connect to an application server to retrieve data or take further action on the awaiting information. A variety of platform-specific push notification transport protocols have been developed, including Apple™ Push Notification Service (APNs), Google™ Cloud Messaging (GCM), Short Message Service (SMS), and other proprietary protocols.
As the number of mobile devices accessing web content and/or applications increases, the burden on application servers and communications networks also increases. State changes or events can result in a large number of notifications being sent simultaneously. This results in many mobile devices simultaneously connecting to an application server that initiated the notifications, which can cause dramatic spikes in web traffic from the mobile devices.